Author: Jessy, Golden Finance
When it comes to the TON ecosystem, the "dot dot" mini-game seems to have become its synonym. Thousands of games with simple gameplay and viral spread through friend invitations are released on the TON chain, and they are thriving on Telegram's traffic pool.
Such games can quickly accumulate traffic, but there are also outstanding problems: user retention is worrying and the life cycle is short. Because of the massive number of users, TG mini-games have also become a means of drainage for project parties and exchanges. The game itself is no longer the purpose, but using the game to gather users is the purpose, which has also caused the deformity of the development of such game projects: born for traffic, and gradually died because of the dissipation and transfer of traffic.
If the mini-game that gathers traffic is the first step in the development of the TON ecosystem, then now, the focus of the TON ecosystem is actually shifting. First of all, at the game level, simple dot dot games have developed and transitioned to a more playable game mode. Not only games, but also more complex applications are born on TON. TON's ambition is not only to build a blockchain with various WeChat "applets" and to put various "web games" on the chain, but to deepen Defi, so that the TON chain will be more "crypto-native" in addition to traffic.
This can also be seen from the official actions of TON. First, the native USDT is issued on TON, and in terms of quantity, it has now risen to fifth place. The TON Foundation also stated that this year it will launch a trustless cross-chain bridge called TON Teleport BTC, which is intended to be used to securely realize cross-chain transfers between Bitcoin and TON.
Defi has become the focus of the next development of the TON ecosystem, and how is TON's ambition realized?
Game development will focus more on playability and innovation
Telegram and blockchain are strongly linked to two sub-products, one is Telegram Bot, which is a bit like WeChat's service account. You send it a message and it replies to you; the other is Mini App, which is comparable to WeChat's mini-programs, with a built-in TON wallet, supporting TON tokens, BTC, and USDT (TRC-20).
According to TON APP data, there are currently 1,034 applications in the TON ecosystem. TON officials have divided these applications into 19 categories, including CEX, DEX, staking, wallets, utilities, bridges, NFTs, social networking, shopping, Launchpad, development tools, etc.
The development of the TON ecosystem is very rapid. When Golden Finance counted the statistics in early May this year, the number of Dapps in TON was only more than 700. In the past three months, it has grown to more than 1,000.
These projects built on TON have a common feature. They are born from the huge traffic pool of Telegram's 900 million users, and are also very adaptable to its lower-income user groups and massive traffic patterns.
And the most typical track is small games. It is not difficult for games in TON to accumulate tens of millions of users in a short period of time. For example, Notcoin, Hamster Fast Fight, Catizen and other games have accumulated tens of millions of users.
Darrel, the person in charge of public link access of OKX Web3 wallet, said in an interview with Golden Finance that these popular small games on TON generally have one thing in common, or the rules they follow. One is that they are simple enough and do not need to use very complex designs to raise the user's playing threshold. The second is that they must have social fission attributes and corresponding task systems. TON chain small games rely on the huge traffic pool in TG, so there must be certain measures in the community channels to attract traffic. Many games will cooperate with communities in TG to carry out community fission.
At present, the games in TG have developed from simply generating traffic to the next stage, which is to use their own traffic to help other Web3 projects acquire customers. NOTCOIN has developed to this stage, and it has also started incubation. Use the small games in TG as an entrance, and then divert traffic to other projects. In particular, it has become an important channel for centralized exchanges in the industry to acquire new customers.
OKX has launched a small game on TG called OKX Racer, and currently has more than 5 million users. The gameplay of this game is very simple, but it also has unique innovations - players guess the rise and fall of BTC prices, and if they guess correctly, they will be rewarded with points, which can be exchanged for corresponding surprise rewards on the OKX exchange in the future.
OKX launched this game as one of its means to enter the TON ecosystem, and it can also help OKX to expand the user base on TON and Telegram.
Take the OKX game as an example. Its gameplay settings are actually very close to encryption, which can educate users about encryption. In the future, when points are exchanged for surprise rewards on the exchange, many new customers will be introduced to the OKX exchange. At present, the game is also connected to OKX's Web3 wallet, and users can become Web3 wallet users directly through the game. The above design can well achieve the purpose of converting TG users to exchange users.
In the view of Darrel, the person in charge of public link access to OKX Web3 wallet, there are many chain games on TG, but most of them are simple nesting dolls, and the life cycle of such games is very short. For a simple game, a unique gameplay is the key to whether a game can be successful. Users can feel the novelty in the game, and the interactive method is obviously different from other games, so users will be willing to try it.
The current game development in TG has undoubtedly passed the stage of the simple dot-dot mode of the first generation. At this stage, the playability of the game is undoubtedly increased, and the game production is also more sophisticated. At this stage, the originality of the game and the presence of a sufficiently excellent community have become the key to its success. The development of the game at this stage is actually to continuously introduce new gameplay and reward mechanisms to keep the game fresh and extend the life cycle of the mini-game.
With the development of the TON ecosystem, especially its close proximity to users, it has also become an important partner that cannot be ignored by various project parties.
For example, in the TON ecosystem, OKX not only focuses on mini-games, but also has good cooperation with TON itself, such as assisting it in landing some industry standards to assist its development in all aspects. At present, the OKX Web3 wallet also supports TON. By switching to the TON network with one click, you can explore various DApps in the TON ecosystem...
It is foreseeable that TON has become an important public chain that all parties in the industry cannot ignore. The cooperation of all parties will accelerate the development and iteration of its ecology.
This also allows it to break away from the constraints of the traffic business and develop in a more encrypted native direction. And Defi is the highlight of its future development.
Defi+payment, the combination of on-chain and off-chain finance
At present, these small games that break the circle are actually laying the foundation for its efforts in Defi in the next stage - allowing users to have their own TON wallets through games, participate in the interaction on the TON chain, and cultivate users' on-chain interaction habits.
And from several major initiatives of TON this year, we can also see its ambition to develop Defi. This year, the native USDT was officially launched on the TON chain, and its issuance volume has now jumped to fifth. And this year, TON will also launch a trustless cross-chain bridge for TON Teleport BTC, which is used to safely realize cross-chain transfers between Bitcoin and TON.
Whether it is the native USDT or the high-security, low-slippage, and low-cost references of BTC and ETH, they are paving the way for the explosion of Defi.
The TVL on the TON chain has made a leap forward compared to the past. According to DefiLlama data, its TVL currently ranks tenth, but most of it is contributed by USDT.
Howard, head of developer relations for Asia at the TON Foundation, said that TON's killer application will be a combination of "games + finance", and many DeFi-related applications have appeared in the two recent hackathons held by TON, which is also in line with the future development trend of TON.
The current liquidity pledge products, wallets and other infrastructure in TON are actually developing steadily. And these are the cornerstones for Defi to achieve a big explosion in the future.
At present, in addition to games, another track worthy of attention in the TON ecosystem is payment. The change in this track comes from the native issuance of USDT on the TON chain, which allows USDT, a token widely used in the Web3 industry and in foreign trade transaction settlement, to be used for payment directly in the chat box in Telegram. Moreover, TON has already connected to multiple third-party payment platforms, allowing merchants to have a variety of choices, which also improves the payment landscape within TON.
The combination of payment and Defi is actually a perfect combination of on-chain finance and off-chain finance. In this way, TON has great potential for development in the future, and no matter in which track, TON is building a bridge between Web2 and Web3.
Some Dapps worth paying attention to on TON besides games:
Social
In this category, we can see social basic protocols, community management tools, and vertical scene products such as job recruitment and dating software. Social networking is the background of Telegram, so social products are an important and prosperous category on TON.
MuggleLink: Freelance recruitment platform
TONEX: Social protocol
Beecon: Community management tool, which can rank user interactions, etc.
TON Dating: Dating software
Mingle: Dating software, the advantage is that after a successful match, you can directly become a Telegram friend, and the two can chat on Telegram very conveniently. But a big bug is that these Dapps do not recommend nearby friends to everyone through positioning. In actual use, people who are tens of thousands of miles apart can only be friends online after matching.
Deficategory
The development of Defi on TON is worthy of attention. Because its underlying architecture is different from that of Ethereum, we have not seen large-scale leading Defi protocols migrate to TON on the TON chain. At present, TON is still dominated by native Defi protocols:
Tonstakers: liquidity pledge, pledge $TON to obtain $stTON
Bemo: liquidity pledge
Evaa Protocol: lending protocol
Blum: CeDeFi exchange, one of the 13 projects in the Binance Labs MVB VII accelerator program
Orbit Bridge: a cross-chain communication protocol developed by Orbit Chain, which can currently transfer assets from Klaytn, Polygon, Ethereum, Wemix Mainnet and Orbit Chain to the TON network
Dex
There are many DEXs that support TON, such as the common Pancake, Uniswap, 1Inch And Dodo, etc. CEX is basically all on TON, and the NFT ecosystem is relatively mature. If we compare the transaction volume of Stonfi and DeDust, the largest DEX on TON, with the DEX data on ETH and SOL, there is still a big difference.
Ston.fi: An important project in the TON ecosystem, with core functions including liquidity mining, DEX, lending services, and staking and rewards. Users can earn rewards by providing liquidity, trading tokens, borrowing and lending cryptocurrencies, and staking cryptocurrencies to earn rewards. It has the most complete trading pairs on TON
DeDust: A DEX with the same functions as Ston.fi
Getgems.io: The hottest NFT trading market on TON, with functions including buying and selling NFTs, minting NFTs and transferring NFTs, and can trade Notcoin NFTs, Telegram virtual numbers, Ton diamonds and other NFTs
Anome: NFT asset issuance, trading market and lending agreement
Fragment: The Telegram virtual number trading platform officially launched by TON in 2021, which can trade Telegram IDs and can be traded anonymously
Launchpad
TonUP: Launchpad platform, issued token $UP
Tonstarter: Launchpad platform, DWF Labs, Kingswap and other investmentsPlatformICO: TON Simple ICO platform on
JinseFinance
M6 Labs